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suspicions that Boris Godunov had ordered his
death never disappeared completely. Toward the
end of Boris Godunov's reign (1598-1605), an
impostor known as
FALSE DMITRII
emerged, claim-
ing to be the true Prince Dmitrii who had escaped
Boris Godunov's attempt on his life. In the confu-
sion that followed Boris Godunov's death in April
1605, Vasili Shuisky played an important role in
shaping the events that ultimately resulted in his
election as czar one year later. First he publicly
reversed the findings of the commission that had
investigated Prince Dmitrii's death, thus lending
credence to the claims of False Dmitrii and
undermining the position of Godunov's infant
son, Feodor, who reigned for a few months as
FEODOR II
. Feodor II was strangled in June 1605
in a conspiracy, as troops loyal to the impostor
False Dmitrii marched on Moscow. With False
Dmitrii crowned as czar, Vasily Shuisky reversed
himself again, and claimed the throne for himself
in his capacity as the senior member of a historic
princely family. Captured and sentenced to
death, Vasili Shuisky was pardoned by False
Dmitrii, a decision he would soon regret since
Vasili Shuisky organized the plot that led to his
overthrow and assassination in May 1606. An
assembly of the land (
ZEMSKII SOBOR
) named
Vasily Shuisky czar, but his authority did not
reach far beyond Moscow. His reign was marked
by continued Polish and Swedish intrigue and a
virtual state of civil war, first in the 1606-07
rebellion led by the
COSSACK
Ivan Bolotnikov,
and then by the emergence of a second False
Dmitrii, who established a rival camp in the
Moscow suburb of Tushino. By July 1610, with
Polish troops advancing on the capital, Vasili
Shuisky lost all support and was forced to abdi-
cate by his fellow boyars and take monastic
vows. In November 1610, with Polish troops in
the Kremlin, Vasili Shuisky was part of a delega-
tion that also included his rival
FILARET
Romanov,
father of the future czar Michael
ROMANOV
,
which was sent to negotiate with the Polish king
Sigismund III. They were arrested and held
hostage, as Sigismund maneuvered to gain the
Muscovite throne for himself. Vasili Shuisky died
in exile two years later.
Vavilov, Nikolai Ivanovich
(1885-1943)
botanist
After a private education in preparation for a
commercial career, Vavilov attended the Timiri-
azev Academy in Moscow. He spent a year in
England (1913-14) working at the newly estab-
lished John Innes Horticultural Institute, where
he engaged in pioneering research that exam-
ined the genetically based resistance of cereals to
fungal-based diseases. Back in Russia, he began
the work that would first establish his reputa-
tion, the origin of cultivated plants. A series of
well-planned but physically daunting expedi-
tions took him to Persia, Abyssinia,
AFGHANISTAN
,
China, and Central and South America. These
trips further contributed to his growing reputa-
tion as an original and productive scholar. In
1921, he was named president of the Lenin
Academy of Agricultural Sciences and director of
the Institute of Applied Botany. By 1934, he had
established about 400 research institutes across
the Soviet Union, and his journal, the
Bulletin of
Applied Botany, Genetics and Plant Breeding,
was
recognized as a leading international publica-
tion. His experimental station in Leningrad cul-
tivated almost 26,000 varieties of wheat that
unfortunately did not survive the German siege
of Leningrad in 1941-44. At the peak of his
career, Vavilov was recognized as an interna-
tional authority on the origins of cultivated
plants. To his great misfortune, however, this
field of research was uncomfortably close to that
of Trofim
LYSENKO
, an agronomist emerging as
the dark eminence of Soviet agricultural sciences
and advocating unconventional theories of
inheritance based on Michurin's horticultural
research. Although he had supported some of
Lysenko's early experiments, Vavilov vocally
opposed his most outrageous claims, but lost out
in the political battle that ensued. As a result,
Vavilov was removed from all executive posi-
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